Governor Shucks His Campaign Promises

The Alaska State budget gap is like a wide financial moat with enemy arrows flying down from both sides, aimed at the governor: more cuts, less cuts, more taxes, less taxes, more PFD, less PFD.

As a candidate, Bill Walker expressed his resolve to make state government lean before relying on new taxes. In a letter he wrote from 2014, found on the United For Liberty – Alaska website, he forecast his budget approach by saying, “State government will become much more lean and we will all have to grasp the reality that we must reduce our State spending aggressively and immediately.”

In his candid (or is it candidate) statement, he goes on to expressly reject “the notion that Juneau politicians need to look at stealing money from your PFD or instituting a state income or sales tax in order to pay for their growing appetite to spend money we don’t have.”

“I will be forced to find efficiencies, make painful cuts, and identify cost savings through consolidated and shared services across departments.”

If the Governor wants to get across this moat alive, it would behoove him to put more of those efficiencies and painful cuts into his budget survival kit than it currently holds.